in defense of rehashs

re·hash [v. ree-hash; n. ree-hash]

1. to work up (old material) in a new form.

The word "rehash" may very well be the most hated word ever by the WoW community. or maybe it's "soon"

There are 2 types of rehashs IMO: good rehashs and bad rehashs. The good ones are those with new trash and mechanics, and only the place is reused. The bad ones are a mere copy of the original place, maybe changing some trash (naxx) or a boss model (zul'aman).

But guess what? The bad rehashs can only be done to raids, because old dungeons don't have nearly enough trash and boss mechanics to compete with the new dungeons. So it's 140% certain that the new scholomance and scarlet monastery are gonna have new mechanics (SM even has a new boss!)

anyway, here are the most common arguments against rehashs:

I'm sick and tired of that place!

Blizz is too lazy!

It's not the expansion's main focus!

So let's work on it:

I'm sick and tired of that place!: Yeah, maybe you are. But guess what? there are people who never went in there!

And truth be told, after the 10th time or so you go into the same heroic you stop noticing the enviroment and only pay attention at how bad the rest of the group is performing anyway.

With new bosses, new mechanics and new phat lewts after the second week or so there won't be any difference between the rehashs and the new dungeons

Plus unless you are into twiking or you wanted the scarlet mail set or one of the scholomance sets, chances are you haven't been to those places in a long time.

So, give it a chance. what does it matter if it's in the same place? You know, in real life different things can happen in the same place as time passes. why can't the same thing happen in the game?

Blizz is too lazy!: You see, back in BC it was much easier to make anything new. models were not that great, textures were low res, many many many pieces of gear were reskinned vanilla gear, et cetera.

Nowadays everything is much more detailed, and all gear is all new.

Still, the community is merciless. "ok, this took twice as much time to make as BC raids. let's consume it twice as fast!". If they don't reuse some places, there just won't be enough dungeon content for the expansion. and even with the rehashs people will still say there should be more dungeons

Blizzard isn't being lazy. They are probably having more work now than ever, because the spectations are so high and they have to live up to them on both quantity and quality.

It's not the expansion's main focus!: No, it's not! But Zul'aman wasn't nearly at the main focus on BC either.

Even if there is a "main story" every expansion, the other stories must continue. If I were to bet, I'd say Scarlet Monastery will continue from Lilian Voss' storyline while Scholomance will tie the loose ends of the "Thassarian-Koltira" story.

Cataclysm seeded many new stories, and I bet every expansion from now on will take a couple of zones with dungeons and finish their storylines.

Cata: Silverpine and Westfall;

MoP: Tirisfal and Western Plaguelands;

Next Expansion: Who knows?

Basically the world must continue alive!

In tirisfall the questline ends with Lilian Voss going to unleash her revenge on the Scarlet Crusade. Did you expect her to do it in pandaria? Or would you rather we had a new expansion set in the old world?

Conclusion: Rehashs are not the men-eater monsters like people want to imagine they are. They help save development time, tie old loose ends without needing a new "cataclysm" (which contributes to storytelling), they help newbies to experience the place for the first time and give veterans something to talk about the "good old days". Plus, they give us some variety in enemies: "only elementals and dragons in cata? no! we have zombies in SFK!"

Anyway, I expect a Stratholme rehash after MoP with Fiona and her Caravan all in there

Rehash for the story - Like using Dragonblight. It fit because of the importance Wyrmrest Temple has to the aspects.
Rehash for easy - Like the Zuls. Just done due to being lazy.
Rehash for time - Like using old gear models when leveling, it's something you'll replace soon so why make 10,000 new models.

Originally Posted by Lumineus

World of Wisconsin. We travel to the real world to fight the minions of the latest Old god, Kurdwheychez the unudderable. Introducing the long-awaited cow level.

You make a lot of great points here, unfortunately you're going to get a lot of hate from the 'but ALL rehashes suck ALL the time NO MATTER WHAT' crowd.

Personally, I'd love to see more things redone with new mechanics, new storylines, new bosses... SFK-style makeovers are cool, and that's what I'm hoping to see when Scholo and SM are redone. ZA-style 'change the skin on the last boss, tone it down to 5-man, and otherwise don't change anything'... meh. I was in a 10-man raid group in TBC, I was tired of ZA by the time Wrath rolled in, I'm STILL tired of it now.

When asked about the role of women in video games, Samus Aran said, "..." - and then she blew up the planet. AGAIN.

Rehash for the story - Like using Dragonblight. It fit because of the importance Wyrmrest Temple has to the aspects.
Rehash for easy - Like the Zuls. Just done due to being lazy.
Rehash for time - Like using old gear models when leveling, it's something you'll replace soon so why make 10,000 new models.

I agree on all 3 points. The first one worked with the story. Doesn't make sense to fight Deathwing in someplace that doesn't mean anything to anyone. No sense in using "you've entered my lair" again when it's not needed.

Zulian rehash was just filler until Firelands was ready. I absolutely despise what they did because it was just laziness. Firelands wasn't terrible though so it's apparent that they did make the best of the situation they'd created.

Using the same model on lots of pieces of gear in levelling makes sense. Because the models are extremely simple and usually not that colourful (or tasteful), it makes tier gear seem so much more appealing. Thankfully, levelling items look much better now than their vanilla versions did, like the rock shoulders that were shared not only with some greens, but with Ironforge Guards. Sure, some vanilla gear looked good (I personally loved the look of Wyrmslayer Pauldrons simply because they were mid-level blues that didn't look like everything else you'd seen while levelling) but most of it had no feeling to it.

Good Rehash: Deadmines, SFK, ZG. Same area, different story, different bosses, different feel
Bad Rehash: ZA. Same area, same bosses, same story (basically), same feel
Just is a Rehash: Naxxramas. Same as ZA, only nobody did Naxx 60, whereas everybody did ZA 70

Theron/Bloodwatcher 2013!

Originally Posted by Alsompr

Teasing, misdirection. It's the opposite of a spoiler. People expect one thing? BAM! Another thing happens.

I disagree that the Zul's were rehashed because the were easy to do. Have you taken time and looked at the idle mobs and the environments? Truth be told, those dungeons are some of the most well-constructed dungeons in the history of WoW. You may hate them from running them so many times, but don't let your hate cloud the fact that they were done extremely well.

The issue with rehashes for me isn't that they're done... it's when they're done in place of new content. If we'd gotten the redone troll instances AND new ones? Yay. but that patch gave us just ZA/ZG as new 5 mans.

The most valid reason to redo a classic is because people haven't seen the place before AND it's classic. Naxx falls into this category for me. Few people did it when it was current and it had an almost mythical stature. Ony was similarly famous as an encounter and for all of us who started after Vanilla, it was a fun redo. But... Deadmines? You can do that as you level even if you start now. SFK the same. SM the same. You can do those encounters now. There's no reason to redo them because people didn't see them when they were new. Naxx40 wasn't like that - sure you could have done the first version in TBC, but getting in was a pain and getting a raid was a pain.

The other issue with rehashes is that it feels like they're doing them out of laziness. How many rehashes were there in TBC? Yeah.. none (aside from Kael in MGT). Wrath brought Naxx and Ony... fine. But then we get DM, SFK, ZA/ZG... Um... how about some new content? It feels like instead of creating new, interesting stuff they're reaching back for instances that were popular and redoing this in place of creating new instances that will be classics in the future. Tell me, what new instances from Wrath or Cata will be worthy of a redo in a few years because people loved them so much? I can think of one - Ulduar. 5 mans? I can't think of one 5 man instance in either expansion that I'd want to see redone as a level 95 instance in the xpac after MoP.

To the people saying the Zul Aman / Zul Gurub rehashes were "bad" because they were "lazy" - do you think it would have been better to forget about the troll story altogether and not bother with the 5-mans?

To the people saying the Zul Aman / Zul Gurub rehashes were "bad" because they were "lazy" - do you think it would have been better to forget about the troll story altogether and not bother with the 5-mans?

How did ZA or ZG connect to the theme of Cata? Right... they don't, really. So yeah, I think it would be fine not to have troll instances in an xpac if they don't line up with the story of the xpac. If they do, or if blizzard wants to have a troll story thread that runs through the various xpacs, create a new troll instance or two and actually advance the story.

The largest most successful MMO in the world that should have the most resources and they rehash so much...Shouldn't really be any excuses.

as blizz said numerous times, not every problem they have can be solved by throwing money at it. if you hire more people, you have to take your time to seek people who are good enough for the job and if there's too many people, the time spent on communication alone (memos being read, e-mails being opened, big meetings, et cetera) increases so much it'd be faster to do it with fewer people. it's the famous "too many chefs in the kitchen sindrome" lol

Originally Posted by clevin

The issue with rehashes for me isn't that they're done... it's when they're done in place of new content. If we'd gotten the redone troll instances AND new ones? Yay. but that patch gave us just ZA/ZG as new 5 mans.

think about what came after launch: firelands and well of eternity were announced on blizzcon before the expansion was out so chances are they were already being produced by than. dragon soul, end time and hour of twilight are dragonblight remodels. plus the zuls.

the big problem is that they spent too much effort remaking the world (which was necessary) and there wasn't much left to make new places after cata was already out.

I think "rehashes" are great if they continue the story; like in SFK or VC. In fact, at that point you can hardly call it a "rehash" so much as a "recycling;" same area and elements, but lots of new parts, too. You can also use that to draw a line between ZG and ZA, as the first was almost entirely rebuilt while the second was really just the original shrunk down. I also couldn't really tell you how that little one-off tied into Cata at all, but then they'll probably get back to it in MoP since they're trying harder to weave continuous narratives now rather than "well you beat the final boss so now everything in this expansion is resolved." Good for story-telling, and good for keeping players curious about upcoming expansions instead of "well we beat all the WC3 baddies so guess that's the end of WoW."
Reusing gear and mob models isn't a biggie either as long as they're nothing special. People that are famous (or infamous) and have a lot of lore to them really deserve something special, like how they gave Azshara her own even though it was "only" a 5-man. Some Old God general who's probably one of many? Who cares if he looks familiar.

You're right, rehashes really aren't that bad as long as they're used for a purpose, and not just as filler such as "hey remember this dungeon you did years ago? Well now you can do it again! Isn't that fun!"

How did ZA or ZG connect to the theme of Cata? Right... they don't, really. So yeah, I think it would be fine not to have troll instances in an xpac if they don't line up with the story of the xpac. If they do, or if blizzard wants to have a troll story thread that runs through the various xpacs, create a new troll instance or two and actually advance the story.

please re-read the "It's not the expansion's main focus!" part where I explain not 140% of all stories within an expansion must be related to it's main theme

EDIT: plus, it's related to cata as the CATACLYSM happening all around the world caused the zandalari tribe to decide it was better for trolls to unite against the world and survive lol

as blizz said numerous times, not every problem they have can be solved by throwing money at it. if you hire more people, you have to take your time to seek people who are good enough for the job and if there's too many people, the time spent on communication alone (memos being read, e-mails being opened, big meetings, et cetera) increases so much it'd be faster to do it with fewer people. it's the famous "too many chefs in the kitchen sindrome" lol

Personally, I don't give a shit what excuses they throw at us, as a customer I simply don't care about their methods, I expect results. Blizz is pissing all over any positive reputation they had with this kind of crap.

Rehashes are el cheapo ways to keep people entertained, there's really nothing more to it than that.

Edit: Can't believe there's even a thread proclaiming this shady business practice to be honourable or enjoyable.

as blizz said numerous times, not every problem they have can be solved by throwing money at it. if you hire more people, you have to take your time to seek people who are good enough for the job and if there's too many people, the time spent on communication alone (memos being read, e-mails being opened, big meetings, et cetera) increases so much it'd be faster to do it with fewer people. it's the famous "too many chefs in the kitchen sindrome" lol

So you say it makes it faster and yet they still can't release things in a timely manner. Don't make excuses for them, with a powerhouse as strong as Blizz they've been producing the game under par for some time now.

Rehash for the story - Like using Dragonblight. It fit because of the importance Wyrmrest Temple has to the aspects.
Rehash for easy - Like the Zuls. Just done due to being lazy.
Rehash for time - Like using old gear models when leveling, it's something you'll replace soon so why make 10,000 new models.

i see one more, which is not mutually exclusive for any of them really: evoke nostalgia

i imagine any of us that played though an xpac or 2 at least have a few places that remind us of good times and whatnot. and some of the zones are essentially dead now by virtue of being outdated... why not use the real estate some might think.

So you say it makes it faster and yet they still can't release things in a timely manner. Don't make excuses for them, with a powerhouse as strong as Blizz they've been producing the game under par for some time now.

the teams who make ZONES wasted too much time and work by remaking all of the old world's ZONES, as well as the new cata ZONES (including the launch dungeons), firelands, well of eternity and remaking dragonblight 3 different times.

they were overloaded.

what could be done was to make new mobs and bosses for old dungeons, which they did. we got cata's 4 rehashs. if they did any more than that there wouldn't be much more room for the next expansions' rehashs. MoP won't be the last one to get old dungeons reworked.

if you want to know how hard their work was, try some 3D modelling. make a place like the barrens on it and see if it's a walk in the park